Do I look like Akshay Kumar?

We all love compliments in all shapes and sizes, don’t we? You innocent people. I also thought like that for a good part of my life, until one day at the gym…wham! Little did I know that day, that my myth of all compliments being good was going to be shattered.

So, I had finished my cardio and was sipping on some water, whilst standing on the terrace of the gym. I saw a dude walking towards me. Mind you, this is no ordinary dude whom you can forget in a day or two and free up the memory cells of your brain. This dude was someone whom you instantly know would occupy memory cells permanently in your brain, just like you feel about Facebook messenger on your phone. Like it or don’t like it, you will be forced to install it and have it happily eat up a large chunk of your memory just for sitting there on your screen.

So, this guy who looked like Sanjay Dutt although photoshopped to be a decade older, walked up to me, his shoulders moving almost like Sanjay Dutt’s shoulders would move in a slo-mo dance performance. He had worn sunglasses at night, so I assumed that he didn’t like any form of light whatsoever.

As soon as he was at a one hand distance from me, he said something that a normal water sipping gym going girl would not expect.

‘You have a gummy smile…like Akshay Kumar’ he said.

I looked at him for a few seconds trying to get my brain to elicit a response which would seem suitable for this kind of description for my smile. Mind you, he had taken all this effort to walk 10m and approach a stranger to say this. Hence, I could not be completely rude and walk off. And what if it was a compliment? Had I been a guy, I would have spent the night at the gym and gulped down a few liters of protein shake, thinking I had a possible career option as a kick-ass action and comedy hero waiting for me. Being a girl, all I could think of was saying ‘hmmph’ and walking away. But, I just blurted ‘Thank you’.

He continued ‘No, you really do’.

I said ‘Aha’.

He then mumbled something about his life. But I had traveled far and wide into my head, trying to figure out whether this comment was sarcastic or it was meant to be a compliment. I could not even see his eyes while he said it, because of those black beauties hiding his true, scheming self. I walked out of the gym after his story was over and went home. I threw my gym bag on the bed and went to the bathroom. I smiled. He was right. I had a gummy smile. I then googled a few pictures of people smiling. They didn’t have a gummy smile. I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not.I dismissed the matter, but I developed a habit of staring at people’s teeth whenever they laughed or smiled or opened their mouths, just to see if they shared this trait with me. So far, it is only me and Akshay Kumar. So if you see me jumping off buildings for a bottle of Thums Up, know that the jaws have possessed us and are making us do crazy things.

Years later at a dreaded dentist appointment(poor dentists, nobody recalls their visits to the dentists as pleasant, relaxing or something that they really looked forward to), a dentist told me I had a jaw overbite, wherein the upper jaw totally overshadows the lower jaw when the mouth is closed. I knew some of my rebellious nature would have seeped into some of my body parts. Perhaps my upper jaw decided that it would never align with the lower jaw, just because it was expected of it to do so. It causes the jaw muscles to be swollen and strained all the time. Things didn’t end there.

After having done ample amount of research to link all my life problems to this damn misalignment(since I could not even smile or laugh properly without inevitable muscle pain), I went to a dentist who asked me to slide my lower jaw in and out a few times. He was pretty shocked at what he saw. For those few moments in the dentist’s chair, I felt that he thought my lower jaw was some sort of Hot Wheels car, which he just wanted to slide up and down a road.

With a grave expression which normally follows such kind of shocked curiosity from dentists, he said ‘ Your jaw is not just vertically misaligned. It is horizontally misaligned as well.’ Leaning tower of Pisa?

He gave me a contraption to wear at night, which would be stuck to my palate, which would help to retrain the jaw muscles, the only issue being it is made of acrylic, which is known to be carcinogenic. I put it on a few times and felt more free than I have ever felt in my life. My only option now is to get braces or a surgery. Both of them don’t sound like a walk in the park. So right now I am trying to do it the natural way – talking to the jaws trying to convince them to let go of the rebellion. I am not sure it is working. I secretly feel that my jaws have joined AAP.

Imagine my skull being put in a biology class a century from now. People would think I am some sort of alien who walked the planet and there would be frantic phone calls to discuss and decipher this unknown species with such non homosapien type jaws.

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You guessed it! I am a writer and an over-thinker. I write funny stories and also share reflections from some of the eureka moments I have(no leaping out of the bathtub to run on the streets, I promise). Hang around the website and do follow my blog if you are keen on reading some of my ramblings.

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2 comments

OMG! He actually did that! At some point, people were saying that I look like Ajay Devgan..it was irritating every now and then to be compared to someone. Trust me on that! Na, don’t think you look like AK. Ha! I remember the thumps up ad, aap ke thumps ke liye aap kahan tak jaa sakte…was hilarious.